Realising what your attachment style is offers you a lot of freedom. It gives you a way to remember that at your core you are whole.
Amanda Blair Hopkins
Do you ever wonder why you sometimes act the way you do? Why you sometimes act illogically in your relationship or are too quick to put up walls or walk away?
Without you having every realised it, your attachment style that you develop in childhood has a profound effect on how you connect with others and the dynamics in your romantic relationship.
What is attachment?
Your attachment style is developed in early infancy and is determined by the relationship between you and your primary caregiver(s).
Research has established that your attachment style can either be secure or insecure.
A secure attachment contains the child’s growing sense of self. A secure child develops feelings of security and safety and are able to explore their surroundings and emotions within a healthy proximity to their caregiver. The attachment framework theorises that a securely attached child will present with a positive working model, thus viewing themselves as worthy of care and others as responsive, trustworthy, and nurturing.
An insecure attachment, in contrast, ignites mixed feelings of anger, intense love, dependency or rejection in the child towards their chosen attachment, as the relationship is inconsistent or not secure; leading to feelings of insecurity and abandonment. The insecurely attached child, accustomed to inconsistent or unresponsive care from the caregiver will present with a negative working model; thus, viewing themselves as unworthy of care and perceiving others as potentially erratic in their responsiveness and support.
Your attachment style can actually predict your behaviour in future romantic relationships. By learning to recognise your attachment style you can stop ingrained behaviours and enjoy a more positive, balanced romantic relationship in your life.
What is your attachment style?
Our first few years of life are incredibly important. Our development and behaviours are determined by our interactions with our primary caregiver(s). As Bowlby (1973) theorised “the propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals is a basic component of human nature.” There are four mains styles of attachment that characterise our relationship tendencies with others:
Secure Attachment Style
Secure attachment is a healthy, positive form of attachment. Securely attached children feel supported and protected. They will prefer to seek out their caregiver rather than rely on strangers and are comfortable expressing their wants, desires and needs. They will have formed a close, healthy bond with their attachment figure. Secure attachment illustrates a healthy development which will have a positive lifelong impact on a person’s interactions and relationships with others.
With a secure attachment, an adult enjoys higher levels of self-esteem, more balanced and healthy romantic relationships and has a natural inclination to trust others for support. A secure attachment also ensures a person has built up better resilience and can more effectively deal with adversity. They will also have developed healthier coping mechanisms to overcome life’s challenges.
In a romantic relationship secure adults seek emotional support from their partners and offer emotional support in return. They are comfortable in a relationship and exhibit healthy and balanced behaviours. They are also comfortable spending time on their own.
As parents a secure adult will easily regulate their emotions, prioritize their child’s needs and create a healthy, nurturing environment for their child to grow within. They also recognise their child is a separate person with feelings and empathize and support them throughout their life experiences.
Avoidant Attachment Style
Avoidant attachment is an insecure attachment style. Avoidant attached children avoid their caregiver and do not seek comfort from them. It tends to occur when children do not receive adequate or sensitive responses to their needs. They will show little to no preference for their caregiver or a stranger. They will also not seek out their attachment figure for support, in times of distress, due to not feeling able to express their wants, desires or needs. Avoidant attachment develops when a child does not receive consistent care from their caregiver and cannot consistently rely on them to comfort or support them. Interestingly, the child may view a stranger as being more attuned to their needs because of this inconsistency.
With an avoidant attachment, an adult may be more likely to face difficulties in relationships, face greater challenges with intimacy and be more likely to be wary and closed off in social interactions. Due to lack of consistency, they may find it difficult to form healthy connections and relationships with others in their life. Adults will have a tendency to be independent, self reliant and can be viewed by others as distant.
In romantic relationships an avoidant adult may find it difficult to form and maintain relationships, preferring to avoid or dismiss situations that may make them emotionally vulnerable. They can be too self sufficient and find it difficult to let others in.
As parents an avoidant adult may have a tendency to be strict and controlling with their children. They prefer their children to be independent and tough and frown upon strong displays of emotion. Avoidant parents also tend to disregard their children’s emotions and needs.
Ambivalent or Anxious Preoccupied Attachment Style
Ambivalent attachment is also an insecure attachment style. It can also be known as anxious preoccupied attachment. Ambivalent attached children tend to be clingy with their caregiver, yet when their caregiver attempts to comfort them, they will remain distressed. The child wants to be close to their caregiver but because of inconsistencies in the attachment figure’s response to their needs, they may not fully trust them for support. Ambivalent or anxious preoccupied children tend to be very sensitive and overly responsive to other people’s needs, neglecting their own needs, because they view themselves as unworthy. Helping others is their only way to get a response from their caregiver and feel a sense of acceptance.
With an avoidant attachment, an adult may be more likely to be clingy and distrustful in relationships. They also may suffer more from anxiety. They have a tendency to be more self critical and seek validation from others when assessing their self worth.
In romantic relationships they will have a tendency to overcompensate in relationships, being overly sensitive and empathic to their partners needs, to their own detriment.
As parents an ambivalent adult can be anxious, overprotective and overly involved in their children’s lives. They will find it difficult not to over involve themselves in their children’s feelings and emotions..
Disorganised Attachment Style
Disorganized attachment is also an insecure attachment style. It can also be known as fearful avoidant attachment. Disorganized or fearful avoidant attachment arises when a child is fearful of their caregiver and the attachment figure’s response to the child’s needs is inconsistent and/or emotionally damaging. The child inherently knows that they must rely on the caregiver for survival. The inconsistency of the caregiver being either emotional unavailable, damaging or inconsistently supportive means the child doesn’t feel able to rely on them to meet or respond to their needs. This attachment style often occurs in abusive home settings, resulting in the child expressing fearful or ambivalent behaviour towards the caregiver. This can also trigger the child freezing in the caregiver’s presence or developing aggressive or distant behaviour. The child may develop trauma or PTSD because they have the no choice at such a young age but to rely on the caregiver even though they are fearful of them.
With a disorganized attachment, an adult may be more likely to suffer with mental health issues due to the trauma or PTSD. It may also contribute a higher probability of substance abuse, depression and Borderline Personality Disorder.
In romantic relationships they will have a tendency to avoid emotional intimacy and find it difficult to form and maintain a close bond. They may also have difficulties trusting others and tend not to seek support from those around them, for fear of ridicule or recurring patterns of trauma and abuse.
As parents a disorganized adult may struggle to connect and form a close bond with their children. They may behave in an inconsistent and unpredictable manner which will frighten and confuse their children.
What happens to your attachment style as you become an Adult?
Our attachment style forms expectations and beliefs in adulthood about the responsiveness, availability, and supportiveness, we perceive are available to us in others. Our attachment style can also influence our emotional resilience, how we react to criticism and anger and our ability to form long-lasting relationships.
Only fifty six percent of adults have a secure attachment style. Our attachment style can change positively or negatively as we progress through key life milestones and relationships.
Due to the complexity of life, adults may have developed a hierarchy of attachments, with different attachment styles operating in different relationships across their lifespan. An attachment style is automatically activated when events trigger the attachment to occur.
The triggers that can change your attachment style are:
Having a healthy or unhealthy relationship
It may sound simple but the state of your relationship will play a key role in shaping your attachment style. A positive, secure relationship can encourage you to develop an earned secure attachment. Similarly, a toxic relationship can cause a secure attachment to become insecure.
Key life milestones/events or experiences
Key life milestones can put you and your relationship under pressure. Career changes, moving house, marriage, having children, illness, divorce or bereavement will all contribute to your attachment style. How you react to life’s challenges and your ability to check in and look after your mental health can all contribute significantly to changes in your attachment style.
Personal development and growth
At different points in our lives we go through periods of change and upheaval. Spiritual enlightenment or periods of profound mental, emotional, spiritual growth can have either a positive or negative impact on your attachment style.
For example, post relationship break up rumination and reflection has been shown to instigate positive personal growth if the securely attached person gave themselves an allocated timeframe to reflect and brood before rebounding whereas an insecurely attached person found it much more distressing psychologically.
Also meditation has be shown to positively promote spiritual and emotional growth and it has long term benefits on a person’s mental health.
Can you change your attachment style?
The good news is that you can change your attachment style. By working on a few key areas, you can move from insecure attachment to earned secure attachment.
Become aware of your attachment style
Awareness is key when you are wanting to progress from an insecure to a secure attachment. By learning your triggers or behaviours, you can manage relationships better and become more attuned to pre-empting your triggers.
First, see which attachment style you exhibit. Then begin keeping a journal, writing down your day to day interactions, in your romantic relationship or key relationships you want to work on. Take a note of recurring negative behaviours and your triggers. By writing down these occurrences you will become more aware of your subconscious behaviours and you will be able to make changes.
Seek out additional therapeutic support
Seeking therapeutic support through psychotherapy or counselling, can also help you to break down and segment recurring behaviour patterns in a safe space and implement coping mechanisms if you want to make significant long-term changes.
Building you self-esteem and self-worth
How you talk to and critique yourself in head is important. If you tend to be disparaging or harsh with your internal voice, then you will have low self-esteem and self worth.
We tend to talk mentally in our minds, similarly, to the response patterns our primary caregivers showed us in our childhood. If your caregiver was neglectful to your needs, you may also neglect your needs. If your caregiver was negative or critical, your inner voice will also tend to be negative and critical.
Begin to reframe your negative thoughts and limiting beliefs about yourself through mediation, positive affirmations and reframing negative thought patterns. Its also important to tell yourself you are worthwhile and deserve a loving, balanced, healthy relationship.
It takes time to reframe your negative thought patterns but by making small, positive changes each day you will build up a much more realistic, positive view of yourself and realise over time that you are amazing, worthwhile and deserve to feel good about yourself in all areas of your life.
Check our our Triple Column Reframing Thought Technique – https://www.simplesoul.blog/simple-therapy-tips/the-five-minute-triple-column-reframing-thought-exercise/
Knowing, loving and accepting yourself
Spend time tuning into the real, authentic you through meditation, long walks, listening to music or whatever inspires you and lights up your world.
Carl Jung emphasised the importance of knowing and understanding your shadow self. In therapy shadow work is getting to know and unravel the hidden parts of ourselves, we don’t like others to see, for example, having a tendency to run from conflict or having an explosive temper or feeling a deep anger or bitterness inside over a past trauma. By accepting the good, bad and downright ugly within yourself, you will be able to grow as a person and be able to feel much more balanced and healthy. By actively recognising triggers, you can then process and heal old regrets and hurts.
We all have our shadow self and its perfectly normal feel a multitude of emotions about this part of ourselves. List the parts of yourself you feel less favourable about and try to think of small changes you can do to turn them into positives, for example, if you have a tendency to run from conflict, maybe change it by facing small challenges and conflicts as they arise at home or in your workplace. Stand in your power!
Also spend time thinking about what makes you, you. There is only one you and you are special. List all your good qualities and be proud of what you have achieved and how far you’ve come.
Treat each day as a fresh start
Changing you attachment style to earned secure attachment takes time and effort. Be kind to yourself. If you have a bad day, don’t beat yourself up about it. We all have bad days, when we seem to take five steps. If you fall into a pattern of old negative thinking or negative behaviour, just try to think and act more positively the next day and most importantly keep trying!
Being aware of your attachment style is incredibly important because subconsciously it will have lasting consequences on your romantic relationship(s). By actively moving your attachment style to secure and being constantly aware and attuned to how you are feeling and behaving in all your interactions, endeavours and relationships with others; you will be able to enjoy a much more fulfilled, loving, healthy and balanced life.